


DJ, Put It Back On

by taykash



Category: Arashi (Band), Japanese Actor RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 23:03:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taykash/pseuds/taykash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>DJ MJ suddenly has competition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	DJ, Put It Back On

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so so so so so much to my betas primroseshows and ltgmars, without whom this fic would still be languishing in a Word doc on my computer while I whined about it.
> 
> This can also be found [here](http://taykash.livejournal.com/9853.html).

DJ MJ is the premiere DJ in Tokyo. He spins at all the best clubs and at celebrity parties attended by beautiful women and half-naked men. He occasionally features on the albums of award-winning musicians, but mostly he likes to keep his music personal, to be heard only by the people present at the time his fingers are flying over his turntables.

(He does keep an audio recording of every single beat and remix he makes, however. He won’t ever deny that he’s a narcissist.)

For most of the week, though, DJ MJ is just Matsumoto Jun, a man born and raised in Tokyo with expensive taste in clothing and occasionally regretful taste in friends.

“The next time you think bringing over a cake is a good idea,” he threatens his best friend, Aiba Masaki, with a plastic spatula, “first taste it to make sure you didn’t mistake the salt for the sugar again. And then don’t bring it over.”

“Sorry, Jun-chan,” Aiba pleads, but he’s laughing. “Honest mistake!”

Jun sighs, and tosses the rest of the cake into the trash. “So, what is it that you wanted to talk to me so much about that it simply couldn’t wait until we see everyone on Thursday?”

“I didn’t want to talk about this in front of Sho-chan,” Aiba protests seriously, “because you’d get your pensive face and he’d get all worried and then Nino would have to pinch his nipples to distract him, and that’s dangerous at yakiniku. He might get burned slapping Nino away.”

“Aiba-kun,” Jun says, sitting down at the table with an open bottle of beer, “tell me before I kick you out.”

“Have you heard of DJ R!sa?” Aiba replies, pouting at Jun’s hands. 

“The I in his name is actually an exclamation mark, so it’s like r-I-sa,” he explains, emphasizing the I with a small hop on his way to the fridge. “He’s really big in Hiroshima, apparently, and he’s been making waves recently here. He’s starting out in all the clubs you used to play in.”

“And?” Aiba liked to tell Jun about all these up-and-coming DJs – all of whom Jun was already aware of – as though they could actually be competition. They usually end up failing, overwhelmed by the too-large Tokyo scene and the difficulties of obtaining a solid fanbase. It’s even more difficult if you’re coming in from outside of Tokyo, when you have no well-connected friends to bribe into coming to your sets.

(Jun’s friendship with Sakurai Sho, Keio University graduate and son of a respected politician, helped him a lot; rich boys with too much money and even richer friends were a big help in establishing his career.)

“And it seems Nino likes him a lot.” Aiba’s voice drops to a stage whisper, and that’s what makes Jun stare at him.

Ninomiya Kazunari is one of Jun’s closest friends -- _now_. Nino is also the most respected club music critic in Japan, and once ripped one of Jun’s early sets apart in a major magazine. Jun had been infuriated, and had vowed to create music so great that Nino would be forced to give him a rating of five stars, a rating Nino has only given to one other artist in his entire career -- Sugiyama Koichi. Jun had been so disgusted at that he had torn up the page. When Jun confronted Nino about his giving a video game composer his highest rating ever, Nino had shrugged and had told him to do better.

They regularly go out drinking together now. Jun has shoved his fingers down Nino’s throat to make him throw up when he’s had too much tequila. And yet, Nino _still_ tells him to do better. He’s still only ever given Jun four and a half stars.

Jun really does appreciate that Nino pushes him, but Aiba saying that Nino likes this new guy at the beginning of his career is making Jun feel a little concerned.

“Any particular reason?” Jun keeps his voice steady, but Aiba has known him since they were in the fourth grade. Aiba reaches for his arm for comfort but Jun slides his hand away before Aiba catches him.

“He said R!sa’s playfulness reminds him of Square Enix video games,” Aiba says, and Jun narrows his eyes. “Said he had a way of mixing beats that made Nino itch like he was going into a boss battle.”

“I hate him,” Jun announces to the general air of his kitchen.

“Which one?” Aiba asks, confused, as Jun stands up to grab another beer.

“Does it matter?” Jun replies and Aiba sighs, scratching his head before finishing his beer with a long drag. 

“Jun-chan, it’s okay,” he says, using his best “I’m comforting you now” voice. Jun hates it when he uses it, because the low hoarseness really is soothing, and it usually comes out when Jun doesn’t want to be soothed. “You’re still the king.”

“Well, obviously,” Jun snorts. “It’s not like R!sa’s been around long enough to dethrone me.”

“Right,” Aiba says cheerfully, “King Jun is here to stay.”

\-----

“So this R!sa person,” is the first thing Jun says when the whole group is sitting around the grill, beers in hand. “Tell me more.”

Nino laughs and laughs instead of responding, and Sho has to restrain Jun from splashing Nino in the face with a glass of water before he finally stops.

“R!sa is a newbie,” Nino finally says when he calms down. “Why, are you threatened?”

“Never.” Jun rolls his eyes. “But he sounds interesting.”

“Does anyone want egg soup?” Ohno says from the corner. Ohno Satoshi is a mixed-media artist that Nino introduced them to. He’s the oldest and the quietest of their group and Jun is irrationally fond of him. But right now, Jun is squaring off against Nino, so he ignores Ohno’s question.

“I heard you liked his stuff is all,” Jun says casually, ignoring Aiba leaning over him to reach for the edamame sitting in front of Sho. “I haven’t heard anything he’s done.”

“Got good stuff,” Nino confirms with a lazy shrug.  
“Five stars good?” Jun challenges, catching Nino’s gaze. They stare heatedly at each other long enough for Aiba to begin squirming in his seat.

"Never mind that," Sho says, and Jun can tell he's just trying to break the tension. "Let's figure out what we're going to eat."

"I want short ribs!" Aiba yelps, waving his napkin in the air.

"This isn't over, Ninomiya," Jun hisses across the table.

"I didn't think it was," Nino replies mildly, then blows Jun a kiss.

\-----

Nino tells Sho to tip Jun off about R!sa's set a weekend later. Jun doesn't really mix in clubs on Thursdays anymore unless they're his own parties, so he's able to check out Club Yellow in Roppongi without rearranging his schedule too much.

It's always a mixed scene there, populated by girls in too-short shorts and men in too-tight shirts. The air is thick with sweat and spilled liquor, the lights catching on too many earrings and wristwatches.  
Jun loves it. 

It's been forever since he's been on the floor and not at the turntables, but it's like coming home.

He pulls Ohno close to him, rocking his hips into Ohno's ass in time to the music, searching the darkened DJ booth with squinted eyes to see this mysterious R!sa.

"Thanks for coming with me, Oh-chan," Jun says in Ohno’s ear, and Ohno just shrugs, rolling his hips back against Jun's. It's always dangerous to go dancing with Ohno -- the night tends to end with them making out in a filthy back alley, their pants undone and their motions desperate. There had even been a party once where Jun had mixed while Ohno sucked him off under the table – Jun had been especially careful to not try anything too experimental that night.  
“Can you see who it is?” Jun asks as they make their way through the crowd, Jun’s hands tight on Ohno’s hips. The mass of bodies push and shove against them but all Jun sees is the DJ booth and all he feels is Ohno against him, Ohno’s hands gripping his own.

They stop dead center on the floor, Jun staring up at the booth. Ohno turns his head to press his lips against Jun’s face and neck. “No,” he feels Ohno say against his jaw rather than hear it.

The strobe lights flash and Jun gets a glimpse of lips upturned in a triumphant smile and earphones decorated with rhinestones. He keeps staring, everything else falling away except for the big chunky necklace and the delicate curve of a nose highlighted by the rainbow lights momentarily glittering on her skin.

“He’s a girl?” Jun says, a little confused, and Ohno stops creating a hickey on Jun’s neck to look back up.

“Yeah,” Ohno says, and turns around to kiss Jun.

Jun threads his fingers in Ohno’s hair and forgets about the way R!sa’s hair curls over her forehead. There’s nothing now but her music and the way Ohno feels beneath his fingertips.

Ohno is pliant in his arms and R!sa’s music sets the rhythm of their movement against each other. R!sa’s beats remind Jun of his own when he was starting out with a turntable in the corner of his college apartment, playing for his friends’ parties and campus clubs. The mixed feelings of nostalgia and arousal shoot through Jun’s veins like a drug, and he tightens his grip on Ohno.

He’s climbing with every song she mixes in, reaching the sky with eyes newly opened by her style of meshing clashing sounds to create a flow that Jun’s never felt before.

\-----

“You never said she was a girl,” Jun says when he meets Nino for lunch a few days later.

“I never said she wasn’t, either,” Nino shrugs, flipping through the menu. “Also, I invited her today.”

“You did what?” Jun hisses, pushing Nino’s menu down to look him in the face. 

“You want to meet her, right? Don’t say you don’t, I know you went spying on her this weekend. I invited her. She likes your stuff, actually, so she’s pretty excited to meet you. Says she has some bootlegged recordings of your work and they helped her shape her sound.” Nino pulls his menu back up so he’s completely hidden from Jun, but Jun knows that Nino had his choice for lunch picked out before he even left his apartment.

“So she got one of them, huh?” Jun takes a sip of his water, pursing his lips. He had actually made those recordings himself, and had sent them to connections in other cities to be distributed throughout the underground club scene for a small fee. It was one of the ways he made money for equipment when he was first starting out.

Others (Sho) called him calculating for that. Jun had thought it was just good business sense, and Nino had agreed when he had learned about them. That marked the first time Jun had doubted his own decisions, because Nino was cunning when it came to money. Jun didn’t want to agree with him.

The bell hanging from the door tinkles lightly when it’s pushed open, and Jun catches a glimpse of colors in the corner of his eye.

“Sorry for making you wait!” It turns out to be R!sa, who sits down with a thump in the seat next to Nino, her eyes crinkled with smile. “The train was really crowded and I couldn’t push my way through.”

“Are you not used to trains? They have them in Hiroshima, I hear,” Nino says from behind his menu. “And probably rush hour, too.”

“Like I go out during the day,” she scoffs.

Jun can’t do anything but stare at her. She’s wearing a t-shirt dyed too many clashing colors, and baggy red painter’s pants that are tucked into rainbow sneakers. He hadn’t noticed in the club that her hair was dyed a light pink. She looks a lot younger than she did in the club, and bears a startling resemblance to Nino. Her smile turns up in the corners the same way Nino’s does. 

“Are you two related?” he asks suspiciously, glancing back and forth between her and the front cover of Nino’s menu.

“She’s my younger sister,” Nino lowers his menu to reveal a straight face, and R!sa nods and steals Nino’s water.

“Bullshit,” Jun says too loudly; a nearby table of four turns to look at him. “Aiba-kun would have said if she was.”

“Ah, foiled again by the idiot that isn’t even here,” Nino sighs. “No, we just look alike.”

“It’s creepy as hell,” Jun says matter-of-factly, but he nods at R!sa. “Matsumoto Jun. Nice to meet you.”

“Naka Riisa,” she says, and Jun is taken by how big her eyes get when she’s excited. “I never thought I’d get to meet you in person!”

“I’m not a hard man to find,” Jun says lightly, and Nino pokes at him with the corner of his menu before setting it aside.

“Just throw enough money at him and he’ll show up,” Nino says. “I like that in a man.” 

“Shut up, Ninomiya,” Jun grins, leaning forward with one elbow on the table.  
"Sounds a lot like you, actually," Riisa says to Nino, poking him in the arm with both hands. Her nails are kept short, and each nails is painted a different color with white polka dots.

Jun can’t bring himself to stop staring at her.

\-----

"She's colorblind, right?" is the first thing Jun says after Riisa leaves. He's not entirely unconvinced that his mild headache wasn't caused by her searing neon green backpack.

"No, just insane," Nino finishes his last bite of rice. "But if you notice - she mixes the way she dresses."

"Good thing her style works better in music than in fashion," Jun sniffs, crossing his arms over his chest.

“So you admit you like it,” Nino points out, settling back in his seat.

“She’s good,” Jun says, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not afraid to admit it. Her being good doesn’t mean I’m suddenly unemployed.”

“Yet,” Nino says gleefully, pulling out his 3DS from his pocket. “I know what you’re like when there are newbies on the scene. You start twitching because you’re stressed and Aiba-kun texts me that he’s worried because you start painting your nails red to hide the bloodstains when you kill them.”

“I’m not going to kill anyone except maybe the two of you.” Jun gestures to the waitress. “One green tea, please.”

“No coffee after lunch? That’s different.” Nino glances up from his screen. Jun can hear the tinny game music softly playing.

“I have a headache,” Jun says curtly with a sigh.

“That’s what making moon eyes at Riisa-chan will do,” Nino replies absently, his eyes glued to his screen. Jun resists the urge to throw his napkin at him.

“I wasn’t making _moon eyes_ at her,” Jun growls, accepting his tea from the waitress with a silent nod. It’s too hot and he burns his tongue on the first sip.

“You were looking at her the way you used to look at Sho and the way you look at Oh-chan,” Nino says, his face pulled together in a frown of concentration. “With your waxing gibbous moon eyes.”

“Are you writing songs again?” Jun asks suspiciously, leaning forward with his mouth in a tight line. “That sounded like something you’d write in one of your songs and then use in conversation to impress people.”

“You’ll just have to see, won’t you?” Nino checks his watch and shuts his console with a snap. “I’ll see you later, Jun-pon. I have to meet the editor of Oricon Style for some stupid column they want me to write starting next month.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Jun scoffs, and blows onto his still-steaming tea.

“Thanks for lunch!” Nino says cheerily and leaves before Jun can make him pay the bill.

\-----

A few days later, Jun receives a text message from an unknown number.

“Nino gave me your number.

I was thinking about it and we should collaborate! ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪

DJ MJ and DJ R!sa! Join our fanbases for a night~ o(≧o≦)o

What do you think?

•••^v´¯`×) I’m waiting! (×´¯`v^••”

Jun spends the rest of the night staring up at his ceiling, his eyebrows furrowed in thought for so long that after a while he begins to worry about wrinkles.

It is a dicey idea. The music industry allows for overlapping fanbases with no loss in profit or success, but Riisa stands only to gain from a collaboration. Jun wouldn’t necessarily gain or lose anything, but he would be putting his hard-earned name with Riisa’s. She would forever be associated with him.

Would that really be so bad in the end?

\-----

“You’re collaborating with DJ R!sa?” Sho asks first thing a few days later when he meets Jun for dinner at their favorite ramen place.

“How the hell do you find these things out so fast?” Jun grumbles.

“I don’t do anything weird! She told Nino, who told me because he wanted me to check that you hadn’t fallen and hit your head and, I quote, ‘begun hallucinating that he’s Robin Hood’.” Sho shrugs, wiping his hands primly with the offered hot towel. “It’s not really like you to help out someone who is so new, you have to admit.”

“I usually don’t like newcomers’ stuff as much as I like hers,” Jun points out, “so when she offered I thought about it and I think it’d be a good idea. Exposure for her and potential new fans from her fanbase for me. There’s nothing to lose.” 

“True,” Sho says thoughtfully. “He thinks you have ulterior motives, though.”

“That’s because _Nino_ always has ulterior motives and can’t ever believe that someone else wouldn’t,” Jun scoffs, “so that’s just him projecting. Why do you listen to him?”

“Because sometimes he’s right,” Sho sighs resignedly, “and I never learn.”

\-----

Jun meets with Riisa the night before they’re scheduled to work Bar Hijouguchi in Shinjuku. She goes to his place because Jun is more comfortable when things are happening on his own turf, and he can always kick her out if he decides that it’s all a bust.

He doesn’t think he’ll want to kick her out.

She shows up at his door in sunglasses that have leopard print patterned onto the lenses themselves, and a denim jumpsuit that’s painted with large metallic stars. Her hair is still pink, but piled on her head in a messy topknot and tied with a bright orange ribbon.

She looks completely out of place in his serious apartment furnished in polished dark woods and spotless cream leathers. He likes the sight of her pink flowered socks against his white carpet more than he ever wants to admits.

“I don’t rehearse,” he says when she’s settled on his couch with a cup of tea. “It’s organic for me. But I don’t know how you work.”

“I usually have an idea of what I want to do beforehand,” Riisa says, and he’s never imagined her so serious. This new side of her makes him like her even more. When he watched her spin, she looked like she was on the top of the world. With Nino, she was playful and teasing. But here, in Jun’s apartment, discussing music, she radiates responsibility with every inch of her rainbow-colored body.

“I brought over a CD of the beats I was thinking of basing myself off of tomorrow if you would like to listen,” she says. “I’ll probably vary from it, but it’s a good starting point.”

“All right,” he accepts, and turns on his stereo system.

Listening to someone else’s empty beats before they’re layered with music is a little alienating, but Jun is so used to it he doesn’t even blink. He likes her beats – they’re entirely different from his but in a way that he can hear the compatibility already. Like Nino said, she mixes the way she dresses; her beats are all over the place, the musical equivalent of blueprints, the foundation of something with grand potential shining through like a beacon.

They’re there for a few hours, discussing work and inspiration, and it isn’t until Jun gets up to make their third cups of tea that he realizes the trains have stopped for the night.

“You can spend the night if you want, I have an extra futon,” Jun hears himself say, like he doesn’t have a perfectly serviceable car sitting below them in the apartment parking deck.

“Okay,” Riisa accepts without hesitation, “as long as I can steal a pair of pajama pants from you.”

He gives her a pair of sweats and a t-shirt before he lays out the futon in the living room, then hides in his room before she finishes changing because he can tell the sight of her in his clothes will prove nothing but trouble for him.

Jun wakes up to the smell of eggs. He fights the urge to get up and greet Riisa good morning, because he doesn’t want to make it feel familiar.

\-----

The turnout at the club is exactly what Jun had figured it’d be, but Riisa is clearly shocked to see the number of people milling around on the dance floor waiting for them. 

“Is this what it’s usually like for you?” she whispers, peeking out at the crowd.

“Yeah,” Jun says casually, connecting his headphones to the equipment.

“I get about a third of this,” Riisa says with a grin, hands over her own headphones to stop the rhinestones from catching the light and revealing their positions in the dark.

“You’ll get here soon enough,” Jun replies, and pretends he’s unmoved by the look of determination on her face.

\-----

Jun has spun with a lot of people in his career, ranging from monsters in the club scene to amateurs when he was in college and just looking to make some cash on the side. None of them had ever been as fun to spin with as with Riisa.

They play tag with their music, her beats dashing in and out of Jun’s steady pulses. He feels like he’s surfing, fighting to keep steady on the mounting waves of music rolling out of their fingertips and through the club.

The room feels like it contains the whole universe and Jun is so, so small, but if he presses the wrong button everything will come crashing down around him. This is how it always feels, and Jun loves the adrenaline, but he feels higher every time he hears Riisa change direction. He doesn’t know how it’s so easy for her to pick up his dropped stitches and knit them back into the musical texture they’re weaving together.

Jun only has to glance at Riisa to see the joy on her face and his heart thumps in time with the music. 

\-----

 _You’re in love with her_ reads the text he receives from Nino immediately after they finish.

Jun turns his phone off and invites Riisa out for celebratory drinks.

\-----

Riisa’s popularity explodes after that night and Jun doesn’t hear from her for almost a month, not that he’s counting. He’s still just as popular as ever, his schedule booked full, but almost everyone he speaks to mentions his night with Riisa.

Nino had given it five stars.

“It doesn’t count,” Jun had said out loud to himself when he saw the magazine. “It’s not _my_ achievement.”

When Riisa finally contacts him one night, she shows up at his doorstep without warning, a six-pack of beer held up in front of her. “My apology for falling off the face of the planet,” she says with a laugh, stepping into his genkan without letting him say a word.

They end up sitting on his living room floor, his coffee table littered with empty cans, shot glasses sticky with tequila, and the shells of nuts that Jun had scrounged from one of his kitchen cabinets. Her socks are purple and gray plaid.

“And then Nino said something I was curious about,” Riisa says, “so I thought I would ask you!”

“What is it?” Jun is relaxed against the leg rest of his couch, one arm on the seat.

He’s not expecting Riisa to suddenly throw herself on him. She smells like spice and tastes like beer, and before he realizes it he has his hands in her pink hair and in the back of his mind he marvels at how soft it is. 

“He said you liked me,” Riisa says breathlessly when they finally break apart, half straddling him. “So I just wanted to check.”

“Nino talks too much and so do you,” Jun says and kisses her again.

\-----

“I’m always right,” Nino says immediately at the next get-together at Aiba’s apartment.

“Shut the hell up,” Jun replies, wiggling his toes in his purple and pink polka dot socks.


End file.
